Efficiency and the Great Exhibition of 1851 : elation and doubt -- Efficient machines and docile bodies : Henry Ford and F.W. Taylor -- An experiment in (in)efficient organization and social engineering : Auschwitz -- Efficiency and disciplinary power : the iron cage and the suburb -- Efficiency and population control : Wells, Shaw, Orwell, Forster -- "Criminal" efficiency : Joseph Conrad's Heart of darkness -- Efficient management : D.H. Lawrence's Women in love -- Efficiency and perverse outcomes : Ford Madox Ford's The good soldier -- Efficiency and its alternatives : E.M. Forster's Howards end -- Efficiency and the perfect society : Aldous Huxley's Brave new world
Summary
Cobley's close readings of modernist British fiction by writers as diverse as Aldous Huxley, Joseph Conrad, and E.M. Forster identify characters whose attitudes and behaviour patterns indirectly manifest cultural anxieties that can be traced to the conflicted logic of efficiency
